R-‘s little orange riding mower caught fire while he was mowing in the field today and started a grass fire that resulted in four different rural fire services responding. It was a tad frantic around here for several hours. Morning was cooler (and dryer) than yesterday, but it warmed up faster than anticipated, and the Read More…
Author: Elizabeth
Writer, photographer, married, mother. Also native plants, wildlife, music, horses, curiosity unlimited, time limited. Pronouns she, her
A Day in the Life
I woke up at 4:30 am for the reason most older people wake up sometime between (and sometimes more often than once between) midnight and dawn. That taken care of, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I picked up one of Allan Mallanson’s “Matthew Hervey” military history novels, Words of Command, and tried to Read More…
More plants, a view or two…
Depending on what the software lets me do, this time. Here’s a plant I’ve seen in the wet areas, but hadn’t identified even to genus before. I’m sure this is an Echinodorus, one of the water-plantains, but not sure of the species yet. We saw it in the “swamp overflow” that had actually had water Read More…
Fields, woods, and a Vulture
I forgot to put this one in, the other day. In my own nomenclature, this is Mama Undertaker who is quite concerned about the human taking pictures of her family, peering around at me with a very suspicious expression. Over the past few days, we’ve been down to and through the woods (I went only Read More…
Another New Species: Carolina Mantis
R- was in the barn, and spotted (because it jumped off the overturned water tub he was planning to sit on) a pale gray preying mantis (try saying that four times fast!) I’m off to BugGuide.net to see what I can find. Praying Mantis Stagmomantis carolina photo September 9, 2021, ID confirmed via BugGuide.net Read More…
80 Acres: Get the Light Right
Today I went up to Fox Pavilion, added water to the wildlife waterer, and then headed *down* the North fence Trail and not up it. Also about an hour later, so the sun would be higher. And as usual…getting the light right makes the pictures much, much better. There were four Black Vultures sitting together Read More…
80 Acres–Other Views of Fall
Views of the grass to woods margin: I was north of Center Walk, where the Indiangrass had stopped, and the only tallgrass is Little Bluestem. The purple thistle-y looking plants aren’t thistles at all, but Eryngo, which is related to pineapple. Distantly. The grass has greened up after six-tenths of an inch of rain night Read More…
80 Acres: The Undertakers
Sober, serious, professionally dressed in black and textured gray, the undertakers spend their off hours sitting around in trees or on fenceposts–or, depending on space availability, on cellphone towers. Black blots with wrinkled gray necks and matte gray heads, dark eyes and large unpleasantly suggestive beaks. Sometimes they soar aloft, first observing from their cousins, Read More…
What Was That?!
There’s always something new. Sometimes pretty, sometimes not. Sometimes a known thing I’m glad (or sorry, like an invasive alien plant) to see. And sometimes a total mystery–not just a UID (unidentified) bird or plant, but a mystery that’s startling and stops me in my tracks. This morning I went out as usual, to do Read More…
80 Acres: Another New Plant
R- brought back a sedge that neither of us had seen before. We don’t have a field guide to sedges (if one exists) but we do have books that include *some* sedges. Correll & Johnston, the huge (old now) Manual of the Vascular Plants of Texas should have all of the Texas sedges, but a) Read More…